59. Your years of “wisdom” may be causing you a lot of dating pain

As a dating senior, whether you’re in your 50s, 70s or beyond, you’ve lived enough years to have gained some valuable wisdom and experiencee. I was reminded of that again this morning when I read a New York Times op-ed piece written by a guy who’s lived on a farm with his wife for the past eight years. He wrote that he understands the wisdom of the old farmers he knows.

“They are wise,” he wrote, “because everything has already happened to them. The barn has burned down. The cows have trampled the cornfield. A finger has vanished into the combine. The soybean market has gone south. If the very worst hasn't happened to one farmer, it has happened to the neighbor down the road. A lot of the surprise has gone out of life.” We could say that about a lot of other things in life too at this age: A lot of the surprise is gone.

Yet sometimes our experience doesn’t seem to serve us well. When it comes to mature dating, I’ve noticed just in my own experience over 10 years that a lot of the surprise about life may be gone, but it sure isn’t true about a lot of relationship pain. Why is that? It appears that while we’ve had a lot of experience we’ve also formed some pretty firm ideas of how things should be by this age. And our ideas may not match reality in the dating world.

Even if we’ve had real challenges in past relationships we tend to forget that challenge is actually a realistic part of a relationship, especially when we’re older. And especially after a long marriage. Dating at this stage of life is never what we expected we’d be doing, and it’s new and different than it was 30 or 40 years ago. We have our ways of doing things and seeing life. Someone else comes along and their ways aren’t like ours. We were used to how Fred didn’t pick up his socks and Mary got irritated when the toilet seat was left up. It wasn’t much of a big deal.

Differences can be painful, though, when we think my way is the only way and your way is wrong. The cows aren’t supposed to trample the cornfield. Maybe Ray, the guy you’re now dating, flirts with waitresses. You think, “My late husband never did that and Ray shouldn’t either.” Or Marge, your new love, wants to keep her male friends. Your wife doted only on you; doesn’t Marge love you enough not to need other male friendships?

The problem in these and many similar scenarios we could describe, is that if you’re hurting you probably haven’t questioned your life views. You haven’t needed to question them in the past. But now you’re in a new game. Are your beliefs and long-held conceptions true? Does it really mean Marge doesn’t love you because she wants to have lunch with other guys as friends? Is Ray’s flirting with a waitress just his fun, joking way of enjoying people instead of the threat to your relationship that you’ve made it out to be?

Suffering in your dating can only come because you haven’t looked to see reality as it is. “What is” never causes hurt. Only our opinions of what is cause us to hurt. We’ve all lived long enough by this time to have a lot of fixed “shoulds” and “oughts” about life. So everything we see in life, tends to pass through these “right-wrong” filters. In other words we’re judging most of the time. When we stop judging, however, we can see what’s actually happening, not what’s happening through our filters. We see that our idea of what Marge and Ray should do is just that – our idea. Does that make it right? When you question it you may find your way of seeing has been colored by the past.

Your husband flirted and had affairs. Does that mean Ray is flirting to have an affair? Is it true that he’s even flirting at all or is that your interpretation of his friendliness? When you’re hurting because of something your new date or partner does it’s time to stop and question, if you want to get out of the pain. Ask yourself: What’s making me angry or sad or jealous? You find your date is doing something she shouldn’t be doing. But ask further: Is that true? Are you seeing through filters that may never have been true? Is it possible your belief is just plain wrong? Have an honest look. With openness you might find you’re seeing this new person with fresh eyes, not through your filters. And who they are, you might see, is wonderful.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer